Olivia Crain
Olivia Crain is the mother of the Crain family. She used to buy old houses, flip them, and sell them along with her husband, Hugh. Biography 1992: Hugh and Olivia have moved their five kids into a huge, old mansion called Hill House for the summer while Hugh and Olivia do the work necessary to flip the property. Olivia says that when they sell the Hill House, they can build their Forever House and never have to move again. Shirley watches her Olivia draw architectural plans for their “forever house”. Shirley later finds newborn kittens in the shed without a sign of the mother. Olivia reluctantly tells her she can keep them. When they most of them are found dead, Olivia explains to Shirley that baby kittens need their mother to survive and she tells her that she gave away the last living kitten, causing Shirley to get angry at Olivia and for Olivia to feel bad. When Theo finds a cellar door that wasn't ever mentioned, Olivia finds bookkeeping records from a business during the Prohibition era. The cellar was likely used for a bootlegging operation. Olivia started getting curious about Theo’s psychic abilities, which “Grandma Mary” had, too. “Sensitive people,” her mother called it, giving her daughter a gift: her first pair of gloves. One night, Hugh comes down to the foyer after hearing a loud crash, discovering the downed chandelier. Simultaneously, Olivia was wandering the house, like she was sleepwalking, and heard the noise. The whole family woke up. Outside a storm raged with hailstones, and a window broke in Shirley’s room. While the family gathered flashlights Nell disappeared in the darkness, so they all went looking for her. While he and Olivia search for their daughter. They find bits of damage from the storm, from leaks to broken glass. And around them, the ghosts of the mansion lurk quietly. Olivia sees them herself. Elsewhere, Hugh thinks he is following his wife through the halls only to find his wife somewhere else. The two of them hear their children screaming after seeing some “big wolf“-type creature with “glowing red eyes.” And out of nowhere, Nell turns up, saying that she was in the same spot the whole time and that no one could see her while she was yelling for help. The storm has made lots of damage to the house, making Hugh and Olivia work more and causing Olivia lots of stress. After the initial storm, Mrs. Dudley was cleaning, joined by Olivia, who opened up somewhat about her family history and her father dying when she was young. She described being home after the funeral, finally crying after being unable to before, and it brought on the rain as she cried, until it hailed— only they were black stones, not hail. She mentioned a couple places where this happened through history, including Sicily, whereas Mrs. Dudley mentioned the Bible and Revelation, in which a passage states hail as “heavy as a talent” fell from the sky. While working in the basement, Olivia comes down with the finished blueprint and hands it to them before going upstairs. Hugh and Horace look at master plans for the structure. He thought that the Red Room upstairs was the source of the leaking water causing all the problems. When he looks over the plans he was troubled. Mr. Dudley suggests to Hugh that maybe Olivia needs to get away from Hill House for a while for her own good. Putting the kids to bed one night, Olivia heard Nell and Luke talk about bad dreams. They started telling her how “the dark gets us” when they grow up. Little Nell talked of a “silver table” and Luke said he’ll grow up to “put poison” in himself. They said she did it to them. The kids wondered: “Are we safe with you mommy?” Olivia is interrupted by Steven walking into the room and asking if she is all right. The twins are not in their beds and she was talking to herself. Olivia was experiencing worse migraines, making it harder to deal with everyday life, let alone all the supernatural madness masquerading as mental illness. Even Shirley and Luke noticed she wasn’t well. Later, Olivia walked into one of the house’s rooms and into the funeral home morgue, where a grown Nell laid on one of the slabs. She also stumbled onto the corpse of Luke, overdosed, before Nell rose and tried speaking, but her mouth was cinched shut from the embalming. Olivia told Hugh about her bad dream. She didn’t want to admit the reality, passing it off as lucid dreaming. One night, she thought someone was in their house. She saw a woman standing over her husband. It was Poppy Hill. They chatted about keeping their children safe— something Poppy knew of, all too well. Poppy had dreams, too. Like ones of her children dying, the same as Olivia. The dead Mrs. Hill put more worries in the living woman about “rot and loss” and horrifying dreams, like those Hill House grows in people’s minds. She suggested, if the kids became stuck in those dreams, there was a way to wake them up. Hugh wakes up to Olivia sitting on top of him, in a sleepwalk trance, holding a screwdriver to his throat. He was able to wake her, and she was frightened by where she found herself. She said she was having a nightmare, then denied she was even putting the screwdriver to his throat. He urged her to look at the master blueprint she drew. He couldn’t make sense of the shapes she drew on it, eventually figuring out it was the map of their “forever house” she repeatedly scrawled over Hill House. Olivia kept believing it was all anxiety, convincing herself she was a hysterical woman like others thought. The only one to assure her she ought to listen to her feelings? Mrs. Dudley, whose experiences in the mansion led her to understand that place better than others. Steven fixed up the vanity for his mom, then she saw adult Nell and Luke in the mirror and smashed it. She claimed it was an accident, though Hugh was sceptical. She was crying out for help, literally, yet her husband wanted to keep attributing it to stress and “all the familiar things.” She finally realised there was something terribly wrong, and the married couple planned to get Olivia out of there in the morning. After she leaves in the morning, Hugh takes care of the kids and Luke asks if his friend Abigail can spend the night. Hugh and everyone else besides Nell think that Abigail is imaginary so they say yes. Later, Hugh calls Olivia and asks is she is okay. Olivia lies and says that she is okay and with Aunt Janet but she is really in a motel. Hugh falls asleep on the couch and Olivia comes home and runs into Shirley who went to get a midnight snack. Shirley wakes up Hugh and tells him that Olivia never left and is still here. Olivia has woken the twins and Abigail for a tea party the four of them entered the red room. He goes to the kitchen to find the bottle of rat poison. Hugh realizes Olivia tainted the tea with rat poison, and runs upstairs to find the door to the red room open. Abigail has drunk the poisoned tea and dies. Olivia tells them that she is waking up and tells them to drink the tea. Hugh runs in and stops them from drinking the tea. Hugh gets the twins along with Shirley and Theo out of the house and makes them wait in the car so he can go get Steven. He wakes up Steven and frantically tells him they’ve got to get out of there. Olivia is limping through the halls, looking through each bedroom to find the kids. Steven is freaked out by his father’s panic, then even more freaked out when Olivia unsuccessfully tries to get into the bedroom (although Steven does not know that it is Olivia). Eventually Hugh makes his son promise to keep his eyes closed, then carries him out to the car where his equally terrified siblings are waiting. Steven quickly notice that Olivia’s not with them… and Hugh doesn’t answer why. Olivia felt the ghosts, too. They were consuming her, convincing her Hugh was taking the kids away to some bad place. She went back up to the Red Room. Then she, like Nell years later, climbed to the top of the spiral staircase. Instead of using the rope, Olivia plunged to the floor below, cracking her skull open. Present Day: Olivia has been under the influence of Poppy Hill and has wandered the Hill House as a ghost all alone. Later, all of the remaining siblings are trapped in the Red Room by Poppy. Olivia does not want them to leave because she is alone and is mad at Hugh for taking them away from her. Hugh convinces Olivia to open the Red Room, allowing him to get his children out and try getting Luke to the hospital. Hugh decides to stay at Hill House with Olivia and he dies there. They reunite and walk into the Red Room together.Category:Characters Category:Crain Family